ISLAMABAD: Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Friday demanded a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of his country's blocked assets, ahead of high-level negotiations aimed at ending the war in Iran.
Both had been "mutually agreed upon between the parties" but had "yet to be implemented", Ghalibaf wrote on X.
Estimates vary on the value of Iranian assets frozen abroad because of US sanctions, but the UN special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, Alena Douhan, put the figure at $100-120 billion during a visit to Tehran in 2022.
His demand came ahead of the planned ceasefire talks in Pakistan.
US Vice President JD Vance, who is traveling to Islamabad for the talks, warned Tehran not to "play" Washington in the scheduled talks.
"We're going to try to have a positive negotiation," Vance told reporters as he left for Pakistan, where he is expected to arrive Saturday.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump on Friday said that US warships are being reloaded with weaponry to strike Iran if talks in Pakistan fail to produce a deal.
In an interview with the New York Post, Trump said, "We have a reset going. We're loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made -- even better than what we did previously, and we blew them apart," the Post quoted Trump as saying.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem urged the Lebanese government to stop giving "free concessions" to Israel ahead of negotiations between the two governments due to begin in Washington next week.
"We will not accept a return to the previous situation, and we call on officials to stop offering free concessions," Qassem said in a written message broadcast on the party's Al-Manar TV, in which he also denounced Israeli strikes that killed more than 300 people in Lebanon on Wednesday as "bloody criminality".
European and Arab states have pressured Israel to stop targeting Beirut, a Western diplomat told AFP.
The diplomat, who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss sensitive matters, said there was "ongoing diplomatic pressure from European states, Gulf states and Egypt on Israel to prevent renewed Israeli airstrikes on Beirut" following Wednesday's attack.
(With inputs from AFP)